headshot

Posted by admin | February 25, 2021

Day two of the hunt a few weekends ago started out poorly. The first pass through the field we were working yielded only a few birds that I had a chance on. They were quail and they were heading from my left to right and about thirty yards out, so not an easy shot. I tried at the lead of two out in front of me, not realizing that the third bird took a line straight over my head and would have been the easier shot.

The second pass was just weird. There were two pheasants that got up in front of me and I missed both. The guy to my right (I was at the end of the line) got both, so I had no chance at a second shot. Then I fell in a badger hole and that sucked. The resulting faceplant hurt and it took a minute for me to get up and a few more minutes to get my back unkinked to continue the walk (we were about 2/3rds of a mile into the mile long jaunt).

The next bird that got up didn’t know I was having a bad day. It didn’t know what it was doing. It thought it was going to fly away to my left. The guy to my right shot at it and drew some feathers. I shot and got nothing but head, effectively blowing it off.

In Gun Smuggler’s Tale, I describe a pheasant hunt through an uncut milo field. My character sees a bird slinking up the row, so is ready for it when it flies. He barely aims and cleanly takes off most of the head in his shot. This wasn’t fiction; I was describing a hunt from about twenty years ago. I was the one who cleanly shot the bird’s head off. Well, most of the head. The lower half of the beak was still there.

Life imitates fiction imitating life. Hmm. Or maybe I just get lucky sometimes!